Irona 700 (33 page)

She sighed and went back to her homework. She was fairly sure that Tiatia had been the only reason her son had come home at all.

Unfortunately, she was wrong.

The Year 725

B
y summer Irona was working as hard as ever. She had no strength in her crippled knee but had adjusted to walking with a staff and wearing a bronze brace on her leg.

Her current term as a Seven would end soon after Midsummer, and she was giving thought to which offices she might enjoy during her year's sabbatical as a Six. It was a measure of her status now that she could choose and be confident of getting whatever she wanted. A place on the Treaty Commission would be coming vacant in a month and would be a new venture for her. The present holder, Zard 699, would make a good Seven if the old guard among the Chosen could be persuaded to elect a stripling of forty-two. So many ancients had died off during the winter that there were now as many Chosen younger than she as there were older. Irona found this disturbing, and she wasn't the only one to have noticed the increased workload.

She wore long gowns to hide her brace. It occurred to her during one interminable meeting that she would soon be changing back from Seven purple to Chosen sea green and must order a suitable wardrobe. While she had let her attention wander—another sign of advancing age!—Ledacos nominated her for something.

She had the Chosens' permission to remain seated during meetings, but did not use it. She heaved herself to her feet and bowed to the First. What was Ledacos up to? She was not allowed to nominate an opponent, although she could easily signal to a follower to do so, but she daren't do that until she knew what office was being filled.
Definitely
senile!

Nobody rose to oppose her, so she graciously accepted election by acclamation. Mallahle 669, the evening's chair, announced that the next item was election of a male tutor for the choosing, which informed Irona that she had just been appointed female tutor. That was a very minor office, not normally awarded to Sevens, but a fine example of Ledacos's malicious humor, a gibe that she might thus gain a daughter to replace her lost son.

Irona promptly nominated Zard 699 for male tutor, as this should give them a couple of hours together, when she could broach the subject of his potential promotion. He looked peeved at not having been consulted beforehand, but dutifully came to the front and bowed to Rudakov on his throne. He was plump now, Zard, and a grandfather, a long way from the skinny boy who had clipped the collar around Irona's neck a quarter of a century ago. He, too, was elected by acclamation.

They met in the temple, early on Midsummer Day, and Irona was able to explain to him why she had sprung the tutor job on him without warning.

“A Seven?” Zard's eyes, always prominent, now bulged. “Me?”

She laughed. “Don't tell me you haven't thought about it! But when Ledacos sprang this vigil on me, I decided it offered an excellent chance for you and me to spend a few undisturbed hours discussing how we get you elected, and for you to advise me on the Treaty Board. I can't speak nine hundred languages, you know.” The standard joke among the Chosen was that 699 was growing suicidal trying to find another language to learn, because he knew them all.

“The Treaty Board may not be the best use of your abilities, Irona. This Elbrus thing is—”

In rushed last year's Chosen, Apolima 724, all a-fluster. Irona explained that she had to wait downstairs and would find the 725 collar ready for her there. Zard summoned a junior priest to guide her.

Then Irona and Zard sat down to wait for the priests to bring them breakfast.

“As I was saying,” Zard continued, “the dispute with Elbrus is going to need a special—”

Trumpets sounded.

“Sounds like they're starting.” Zard rose and wandered over to the window. “Goddess! Look at them, Irona. They're only kids. When I put that collar on you, I saw a gorgeous young woman, not a child!”

She had seen him as an owlish youth, she recalled, but girls of sixteen preferred mature men, at least two years older than themselves. She thanked him for the compliment and went to join him, just as the boy at the head of the first group of pilgrims reached into the coffer and brought out his token.

“Mind you,” Zard remarked. “Some of the lads there are too hefty to argue with. Like that one in the second group, see?”

Irona swallowed a few times before she managed to agree. She had completely forgotten that this would have been Podakan's year to make the pilgrimage, were he eligible. If he had truly masqueraded as a pilgrim last year, as Daun had said, wasn't he terrified of being recognized by the priests? Well, no. With thousands of adolescents marching by every year, they could not possibly remember every face.

But he wasn't eligible, so why was he here? When had he ever turned up early for anything before? He must have been waiting at the temple gate for hours.

She watched in dread as the boys progressed through the ritual—not many girls had shown up so early. All her fears were realized when that year's fourteenth candidate's token stopped on the same spot hers had, so many years ago. The spectators yelled in astonishment, and it took the trumpeters a moment to realize they had to blow the final fanfare already.

“Looks like we'll have to postpone our discussion, Irona,” Zard said.

She mumbled, “Yes.” There was nothing she could do about the latest Chosen. He was an adult now. Not being native-born, he wasn't eligible to be chosen, but Lavice was a common Benesh family name, so the priests would not have thought to ask unless they had reason to, and they couldn't ask now.
The goddess would not make a mistake!
Apolima 724 came running out on the stage—that girl never just walked anywhere—and reached up to fasten the collar around Podakan's already burly neck.

Irona said, “I hope it chokes him.”

Zard spun around. “
What?
”

She had not intended to speak aloud. “You are going to have your hands full with that one, Tutor.”

Not for Podakan the terror or hysterics of most Chosen. The crowd cheered as he waved fists above his head in triumph. Then he grabbed Apolima in both arms and kissed her. The crowd gasped in horror, before managing an uncertain second cheer.

“I see what you mean.”

“I never managed to teach him much,” Irona said. “He wears the scars of the knout on his back and Gren claws on his chest. He has his own concubine, by the way.”

Zard's eyes looked ready to fall out altogether. “Your son? This is incredible! Caprice has never been known to choose a Chosen's child before.”

She hadn't this time, either. Why, oh why, had Irona not foreseen this? “Let's go down and congratulate him, shall we?”
Oh, Goddess, Goddess!

In the recovery room, they found Apolima still chalky white with rage at the way Podakan had shamed her in public, and the villain himself enjoying a draft of Source Water. A flash of apprehension crossed his face when he saw Irona, but then he leered triumphantly. She could not denounce his deception now without dooming them both to the sea death.

“Bless you, Dam! Didn't expect to see you here. Are you to be my tutor, Your Honor?”

Then Apolima had to be told. “Your son? The one you … er …”

“Flogged,” Podakan finished for her. “Yes. Took the flesh off my back. I'll show you my scars if you want. Oh, here, Dam, this is yours. I borrowed it.” He handed Irona his empty water bottle. She had never seen it before. He was so smug that she wished somebody would throttle him.

Apolima clapped her hands. “So Holy Caprice is showing her appreciation of …” She hesitated.

“Her appreciation of my son or her disapproval of me?” Irona asked ironically.

Podakan found that even funnier. Revenge was proverbially sweet, and he had totally outwitted the mother who had shamed him. “Now I'm a grown-up, so I'll send Tia over for the assignment paper, Dam.”

“That's up to your tutor,” Irona said, and was pleased to see her son at a loss, even if momentarily.

“Tia is the concubine?” Zard asked. “I think you should assign her to me, 700. I can decide what her duties will be.”

“Yes, I'll do that,” Irona said. Ownership of Tiatia would give Zard some hold over his diabolical protégé.

Veer hated to be interrupted when he was working, but the moment Irona got home she thumped into his studio and insisted he stop what he was doing, find a lantern, and escort her down to the cellar.

He gave her an odd look. “May I reserve judgment on your sanity?”

“The new Chosen is Podakan 725.”

“What?”

“And I should have guessed. Come along.”

The cellar was fairly small, for Sebrat House was built on a steep hillside, where cellars tended to leak during winter rains, causing anything stored in them to rot and fall apart. It had been a dozen years since Irona hid the bucket she was searching for, and much had changed since then in the way of furniture brought down to be stored or removed to be disposed of. When she did find it, the evidence was obvious.

“Look at the dust!” she said. “Someone moved these tapestries to get at whatever was underneath. Over there, where things have not been disturbed, the dust is thicker. And there are fingermarks.”

“Not very recent ones.” Veer was being wonderfully patient, considering that she had still not explained.

“He grew up in this house. You can't have a small boy not explore a cellar.”

“Of course not. Darling—”

“But he was here last winter. When he came to stay for a week, remember? He knew exactly what he wanted and where to find it.” And that was what she should have foreseen. “It's full of black pebbles. Give me one and bring another.”

“You've been overworking. A Source Water poultice on the forehead …”

“Stop trying to be funny. This is deadly serious.”

“They're sticky,” Veer complained, but he did as he was told.

Irona hobbled back to the stair and hauled herself up, one step at a time, all the way to the second floor and her study. She sat down. Her hands were filthy and she might have cobwebs in her hair. Veer pulled up a chair and tossed the black pebble from one hand to the other. She gave him the one she had brought, so he had two to play with.

He shouted, “
Goddess!
” and dropped them both as if they were hot coals. They stuck together even after they hit the rug. “It's maleficence. A fix!”

“No.” She explained as she had explained to old Knipry a dozen years ago—not the Dread Lands, but tiny Kadowan Island, mating rocks, how sea hunters and fishermen used a piece of such stone to find north. Veer took some persuading, but eventually he picked them up and examined them again.

“You see that they will only mate one way?” she said. “The other way they repel each other. The effect works even through cloth or a thin board. They're not interested in other types of stone. Nor metal. I've tried every kind I could get my hands on: lead, copper, silver, gold, tin, even quicksilver. The mating rocks mate only with each other.”

“Or quarrel with each other. Are you hinting that Podakan stole a piece of this and … and what, Irona?”

The sudden anger in his eyes made her wonder if even Veer might denounce her to the Seventy as a witch.

“When I was a child, I found a few tiny pieces my father had hidden away, just as my child must have found these. I discovered what they did, and my father swore me to secrecy, telling me he would be sent to the sea death if I talked and I might go with him. But I remembered, and even on the day I was chosen, twenty-six years ago, I wondered if the miracle was faked.”

She had mentioned it then to Zard 699, she remembered. She hoped that he didn't, or he might start wondering what had happened today.

“How?” Veer asked.

“A big piece of black stone underneath the goddess's bowl, and one special token with another piece inside it. Think back to when you made your pilgrimage; you reached in the coffer to find a token, and what happened?”

“What do you mean, ‘what happened?' I picked up a token from a heap of them in there. What else could happen?”

“Hands inside the box forced mine on me, love. My tutor said that the priests had simply been refilling the basket at that moment, which could be true, but I suspected that a special token had been intended for the boy in front of me. A girl had fainted and thrown the count off. The priests had taken a bribe. … Perhaps only two priests, or a few of them. One priest identified Dvure and somehow signaled to another in the coffer. They daren't cry foul, of course. And they won't today, either. But now they have two ‘special' tokens.”

Veer had turned pale. “First you, by accident. … Then you faked it for your son?”

“I certainly did not, but that's what they'll all think. If the priests denounce Podakan or me, they'll bring the whole Empire tumbling down. No miracles. Caprice is a fake. They are charlatans. The Seventy are frauds. Total disaster.”

She could see his mind rejecting what he was hearing, building walls of denial.

“I think you're misjudging your son, Irona. You drive yourself hard, and you've always been too hard on him. The goddess knew what she was doing when she chose you to guide her city. Today she chose him.”

Irona shook her head and produced the canteen that Podakan had given her. “Ever seen this before?”

Veer did not bother to take it from her. “Don't think so. But there are thousands like that, made from a tube of hide off an animal's leg. Tan it, turn up one end, sew it tight, seal it with wax. Put a mouthpiece in the other end, add a cord. … Thousands.”

“And cut a slit in one side to make a pocket out of it? You can slide your hand inside it, see—what sort of water bottle is that? He went to the choosing last year, remember. We all thought he was trying to bluff his way in at fifteen, but he went to see exactly how it was done. He has very large hands, so he probably took two tokens from the box, tossed one out to the goddess, and palmed the other. Then he hollowed it out, or something, and glued a black stone in it. He made this fake water bottle to smuggle it into the temple. When his turn came, he pulled the token out, again hidden in one of those big hands of his, and pretended to take it from the coffer. And finally he couldn't resist giving me this evidence because he wanted me to know how he'd outsmarted Caprice and the Empire.”